"I can't live like this anymore...the street is filled with water again," said Tina Downer of Fox Beach Avenue

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A full moon. The high tide. A vicious storm.

These are the conditions that birthed Hurricane Sandy and, almost exactly two months to the day later, hit Staten Island again Wednesday night, putting weary residents through a heartbreaking, shadowy deja-vu.

The now well-known pressure points along the borough's East Shore endured the brunt of this week's weather event, with water rising in the streets, reaching into basements and causing sewage back-ups on blocks which residents say have been problematic for years.

While the damage, to be sure, was not nearly on the same scale as that caused by Sandy, Wednesday night's storm pushed some Islanders to their emotional breaking point, and brought into sharp focus the debate over building in the flood plain and the government's role in reshaping the borough's coastline.

"I can't live like this anymore...the street is filled with water again," said Tina Downer, whose family has not moved back into their Fox Beach Avenue home since Sandy. "I don't think this is going to be an occasional storm, a little water here and there. Since the 1992 Nor'easter, anybody who lives here knows now it's not just a 100-year-storm."

She choked up as she described the "dream house," where she lived for two decades -- the house she and her husband paid for, then saved up to build an addition with sweeping views of the sea.

But safety, she said, comes first, and she simply cannot go back.

"There is always going to be a storm that causes this kind of flooding," she said. "This really has to be a wake-up call to our elected officials to stop pushing for people to move back into their homes."

Such were the thoughts of three Staten Island lawmakers, who hopped in the car together Wednesday and traveled through the beaten up, still largely uninhabitable streets of Zone A, to survey the damage and speak with constituents.

"One thing this has underscored for me, is why I'm such a strong believer in the acquisition process," said Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid Island/Brooklyn), detailing his own frustration in lack of concrete answers for a family on Sioux Street in Midland Beach, who are living in a trailer and trying to figure out their next steps. "When you're asking any of those folks for patience, it's just not right. Their patience has run out. These homes in low lying areas, damaged badly by Sandy, cry out for being acquired. It has to be one of the tools in the tool box."

But, he lamented, so many of the decisions about how to move forward hinge on other decisions, such as how much money will come from the federal government, FEMA maps and the like.

"There are certain areas of the district that are prone to flooding and these are problems we are seeing recurring year after year. Sandy obviously magnified it to another level," said Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn), also a strong proponent of allowing the government to step in and offer to purchase properties where it no longer makes sense to live. "Now we have an opportunity to change things and rebuild Staten Island in a better way."

State Sen. Diane Savino, whose district covers the North Shore as well as the hard-hit areas of Coney Island and Brighton Beach, said after Sandy changed the topography of the shoreline, destroying sea walls as well as natural barriers, the risk of flooding has grown even more acute.

'HUMPTY DUMPTY'

"We're not going to be able to put things back the way they were. And even if you could put Humpty Dumpty back together again, who can sleep at night? At what point do people just say, 'I've had enough.' The more people you speak to in these really bad areas, they say they want to get out," said Sen. Savino. "We need to be smart. We need to give them some answers."

For Naim Gjenashaj, an 18-year resident of a low-lying point on Milton Avenue in New Dorp Beach, the dance has become routine: A storm comes, the water rises, the sump pump goes on, or the first floor living area will fill with sewage.

"Everything here would have been ruined if we hadn't switched this on last night," said Gjenashaj, showing the pump, which he ran downstairs to turn on at 2:30 a.m. Thursday morning.

He said he and his family dipped deep into their savings and retirement accounts to come up with nearly $50,000 in repairs necessary after Sandy, and his sister just moved back in to the first floor last week. "They have to replace the sewers in the ground, or this will just keep happening."

The refrain was the same from Cuba Avenue, also in New Dorp Beach, where Susan Maiorana, broke down in tears as water swallowed up her garage, destroying all the appliances she replaced in the past few weeks.

"My husband was down there and put the pumps on. All of a sudden the water came in again, everything is gone," she said, blaming the problem on backed-up sewers.

According to the city Department of Environmental Protection, a plan to expand the Blue Belt storm water management system will offset some of the back-up issues that arise during similar storms with high tides.

"We are in the process, announced last year, of adding to the Blue Belt, to manage storm water," said spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla. In the meanwhile, she added "...for the low-lying areas, we are responding to sewer back ups and pumping out from the street as necessary."

Those low-lying areas deserve some serious rethinking, said Irving K. Robbins, a professor of astronomy at the College of Staten Island, who explained why Wednesday night's storm delivered such a wallop to the coastal areas.

"This is what happened with Sandy, though obviously not as bad. You have a double whammy. If you just happen to have the right phase and the right position of the moon, you can have high tide, simultaneously if you have a wind pushing the water toward the shore," he said. "Technically we should never build in a flood zone or in a tidal zone, where there is the possibility of real serious flooding. But people love to live near the water. People like water, but unfortunately water has the ability to smack you in the face sometimes."

A volunteer who spent the night camped in the waterfront community relief tent on Cedar Grove Avenue came to understand that concept, very literally, Wednesday night.

"I was sleeping, and the water just seeped right up around me," said the Brooklyn volunteer who simply goes by Stackz, holding up his waterlogged sleeping bag.

"This can dry," he said with a shrug. Then looking in the direction of the street and houses destroyed during Sandy, where water again pooled in the street, he said. "Look at what everybody else has to deal with."---Follow @siadvance on Twitter